


Mission Make the Office Look Super Flowery Awesome

by imustspeakmyheart



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Bonding, Flowers, Fluff, Friendship, Just the sweetest fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 09:58:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16038134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imustspeakmyheart/pseuds/imustspeakmyheart
Summary: Phase one, acquire flowers. Phase two, make sure Mistah Steel isn’t in the office. Phase three, deploy flowers. Step four, Juno Steel Private Eye, happy.--Rita buys our favourite lady some flowers for the office





	Mission Make the Office Look Super Flowery Awesome

**Author's Note:**

> Written as birthday gift for one of my dear friends (find them at illbecreativelater on tumblr for Quality art), now long overdue.   
> Hope you enjoy reading!

 

Usually, Rita spent her days off binging streams, calling with Franny, or painting her nails a new colour -now she thought of it, she did most those things at work too but that’s beside the point- but today she was on a _mission._ Mission Make the Office Look Super Flowery Awesome for My Equally Super Awesome, but Less Flowery Boss. He’d just been so sulky lately, well Mistah Steel was always at least a _little_ bit sulky Rita knew that came with the package, and some flowers to brighten the place up smidge would be just what he needed. Rita was a hundred percent sure.

Who didn’t like flowers? People with bad opinions, that’s for sure. And while Rita had never seen Juno with flowers, literally ever, it was the thing to do when one of your best pals was in a slump right? All the streams seemed to tell her that very thing, that flowers made people happy, which was exactly why her very own best boss deserved a million of them in his office at all times.

Which was what brought Rita to Hyperion’s biggest and probably least illegal underground flower market. If she was going to surprise Mistah Steel, she was going to do it right. She was going to do it big. She was going to do it by slamming her hands onto the counter of the first stall she saw and saying, very kindly, “I need all the happy flowers you got, stat, I ain’t got all day and this very important,” of course followed by an excited thank you and a transfer of credits that she might have thought of as a lot if it wasn’t for a very special lady.

Sure it might have been a little been weird that the flower guy said “Goodbye Rita, good luck with the detective,” when she left, but she wasn’t about to look a gift salesman in the mouth so to say. After all, she’d bought pretty much all of his best flowers. So probably he was just a nice man who knew his clientele very very well. Must be.

Eventually it took Rita’s _and_ Franny’s car to bring all the flowers to the office. This was phase two of her plan, because all important plans had phases.  Phase one, acquire flowers. Check. Phase two, make sure Mistah Steel isn’t in the office. All that took was a teeny hack into the police department’s crime watch station, which she knew Juno kept track of, to give him a fake lead to follow up on for a few hours. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Check. Phase three, deploy flowers. Step four, Juno Steel Private Eye, happy. Optional step five, get a raise because Rita was just the sweetest most thoughtful employee! Very optional, this wasn’t about Rita after all, but it was nice to fantasize.

So where was she? Oh, right, deploy flowers. She had to be fast, lord knew how long Mistah Steel would take on her little wild goose chase and she couldn’t take any chances. A whole day of preparations and getting up early and missing some of her most favourite streams would be wasted if Mistah steel walked in before all the flowers were ready.

With that goal in mind, Rita set to work. At lightning speed she moved through the office, hiding flowers in Juno’s filing cabinets, his drawers –especially the one with the whiskey bottles-, on his desk. No surface was safe from Operation Make Juno Steel Happy For Even One Teeny Second. After half an hour and about a gazillion flowers pressed and stuck and placed onto every bare inch of the little office, Rita nodded solemnly to herself as she surveyed her handiwork. Deploy flowers, check. And with that she happily clicked Juno’s office door closed behind her, locking it up with her spare key that Mistah Steel might or might not know she had made. Now the waiting game began.

 

It took all of Rita’s willpower not to jump out of her desk chair the second she heard the outer door to their office open accompanied by the immediate sound of Juno grumbling about the inconclusive lead that he’d been tipped on. No, Rita wanted to see his authentic, one hundred percent unadulterated reaction even if it was very very hard to keep nonchalantly watching her stream as Juno trudged past her desk. If he saw the one bouquet that she’d put on her own desk, he didn’t say anything about it. He just muttered a hello and walked on by, clearly annoyed that he’d left the office for nothing.

“Welcome back, Mistah Steel.” Rita easily replied with barely concealed enthusiasm. Lucky for her, that was just kinda how she always was so Juno didn’t find it particularly strange to hear this inflection in her voice. Under her desk Rita’s legs were shaking with excitement, eyes trained on Juno, who was reaching out his hand to open his own office door after he’d unlocked it.

The moment seemed to last an eternity, to happen almost in slow-motion; Juno’s hand reaching for the handle, pushing it down, swinging the door open. Rita felt herself leaning towards Juno as the movement went on, intensely watching his face. The door swung open, Juno swept his unaffected gaze upwards and into his office. For a second his face was the picture of stillness. Then he frowned, got that goofy expression on his face that he put on whenever something really bizarre was in front of him that he didn’t understand one bit which was a look Rita was super familiar with. She was sitting on the edge of her seat.

“Rita.”

“Yes, Mistah Steel?”

“What the fuck.”

Unable to contain herself any longer Rita jumped up from her seat and bounded over to Juno, taking his arm and dragging him into the office.

“It’s a present Mistah Steel, isn’t it great, I got all kinds of flowers and put them up nice and pretty for you so your office looks and smells extra great and happy! Look I got roses and alstroemeria, amaryllis, bird of paradise, chrysanthemum, did I mention roses? Oh! And dahlias right here, the nice seller person at the market suggested that one. There on the window I put some daisies, and while I was waiting for you to come back I actually made some daisy chains. They’re in my desk drawer now, but I can go grab ‘em real quick and we can both wear them and be a little flowery too. Wouldn’t that be nice, Mistah Steel? What do ya think?”

As the talked she’d been pulling him all over his little office, pointing out the different flowers and tugging at Juno’s arm emphatically every time she got really excited, which of course was pretty much the whole time. Juno just let himself be led, looking around in awe and confusion, his mouth hanging open just a little bit and sometimes moving as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t get the words out.

“Hello, Mars to Mistah Steel.” Rita stopped in her tracks, poking Juno’s arm that she was also holding.

“You did this… Why exactly?” Juno stepped back so he could lean against his desk, bracing the arm that wasn’t held hostage by Rita onto it. He didn’t catch Rita’s eye, just kept looking around.

“Well, you just seemed really out of it lately boss, really down in the dumps and all. More than usual, anyway.” She added, at a raised eyebrow from Juno. Then that look softened, right before he pulled his arm away from her and stepped off to look around the room again. He stopped in front of a pair of flowers to trail his hand over them before turning around and looking back at Rita. She was bouncing on her toes, hands clasped in front of her to keep from fidgeting too much. She couldn’t help it, she was just so ecstatic.

“So, you like it right boss? Would be a big shame if you didn’t, I really did spend all morning putting this all in here and that isn’t even speaking of going to a very super legal flower shop to buy all these and getting Franny to help me carry them and making the daisy chains while I was waiting for –”

Rita really had horrible spatial awareness when she got all rambly, so she didn’t notice Juno move at all until his arms were around her shoulders and her face was being smooshed into his chest.

“I like it, Rita. Thanks.” It was muffled, words half caught in her hair as Juno pressed his lips against her crown. If she felt some wetness there later, well. No one would hear it from her. Rita clutched at Juno’s back, rubbing one hand soothingly up and down.

“You want me to get the daisy chains, boss?”

She could have missed it had she breathed. Rita grinned into Juno as he spoke, ever so softly, “I’d love that.”

Step four, Juno Steel Private Eye, happy even for just a moment. Check.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos always greatly appreciated <3
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at imustspeakmyheart


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